Know: ‘timing is everything.’

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Marketing Insights from A to Z

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tising, sales promotion, salespeople, and public relations to dissemi-
nate messages designed to attract attention and interest.
Promotion cannot be effective unless it catches people’s atten-
tion. But today we are deluged with print, broadcast, and electronic
information. We confront 2 billion Web pages, 18,000 magazines,
and 60,000 new books each year. In response, we have developed
routines to protect ourselves from information overload. We toss
most catalogs and direct mail unopened into the wastebasket; delete
unwanted and unread e-mail messages; and refuse to listen to tele-
phone solicitations.
Thomas Davenport and John Beck point out in The Attention
Economy that the glut of information is leading to attention deficit
disorder (ADD), the difficulty of getting anyone’s attention.
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The
attention deficit is so pronounced that companies have to spend
more money marketing than making the product. This is certainly
the case with new perfume brands and many new films. Consider that
the makers of The Blair Witch Project spent $350,000 making the
film and $11 million to market it.
As a result, marketers need to study how people in their target
market allocate their attention time. Marketers want to know the
best way to get a larger share of consumers’ attention. Marketers ap-
ply attention-getting approaches such as high-profile movie stars and
athletes; respected intermediaries close to the target audience; shock-
ing stories, statements, or questions; free offers; and countless others.
Even then, there is a question of effectiveness. It is one thing to
create awareness, another to draw sustained attention, and still an-
other to trigger action. Attention is to get someone to spend time fo-
cusing on something. But whether this leads to buying action is
another question.
Communication and Promotion